Aptamer‐based extracellular vesicle isolation, analysis and therapeutics

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play an important role in many physiological processes. Thus, EV analysis has a great value for the understanding of mechanisms underlying disease progress or diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The overlapped physical and immune properties between EVs and events in body fluids, as well as the phenotypic heterogeneity of EVs, require efficient isolation and analysis methods. The unique properties of aptamers, such as facile modification and programmability, make them easily assembled as powerful platforms for EV isolation and analysis. EVs can also be used as vehicles for drug delivery, benefiting from the properties of homing ability, hypo-immunogenicity, and strong tolerance. The affinity recognition ability to targets and the feature of single stranded DNA of aptamers make them useful in promoting the targetability of EVs and delivery of nucleic acid drugs. This review summarizes recent progress in aptamer-based EV isolation, analysis, and aptamer-functionalized EVs for therapeutics.